Tony and Susan

Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband Edward Sheffield, an unpublished writer. Now, she's enduring middle class suburbia as a doctor's wife, when out of the blue she receives a package containing the manuscript of her ex-husband's first novel. He writes asking her to read the book; she was always his best critic, he says.

As Susan reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a math professor driving his family to their summer house in Maine. And as we read with her, we too become lost in Sheffield's thriller. As the Hastings' ordinary, civilized lives are disastrously, violently sent off course, Susan is plunged back into the past, forced to confront the darkness that inhabits her, and driven to name the fear that gnaws at her future and will change her life.

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Fifteen years ago, Susan Morrow left her first husband Edward Sheffield, an unpublished writer. Now, she's enduring middle class suburbia as a doctor's wife, when out of the blue she receives a package containing the manuscript of her ex-husband's first novel. He writes asking her to read the book; she was always his best critic, he says.

As Susan reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a math professor driving his family to their summer house in Maine. And as we read with her, we too become lost in Sheffield's thriller. As the Hastings' ordinary, civilized lives are disastrously, violently sent off course, Susan is plunged back into the past, forced to confront the darkness that inhabits her, and driven to name the fear that gnaws at her future and will change her life.

Austin Wright was born in New York in 1922. He was a novelist and academic, for many years Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Cincinnati. He lived with his wife and duaghters in Cincinnati, and died in 2003 at the age of eighty.

"Marvellously written --the last thing you would expect in a story of blood and revenge. Beautiful."

"Compelling...Mesmerizing...Absolutely irresistible."

"A masterpiece...A brilliant, brainy novel full of thrills...It would be easy to say that his critical intelligence dominates Tony and Susan, but Wright is a wonderful storyteller, a wonderful novelist...Tony and Susan makes one hunger to read more of Wright's work. "

"Absorbing, terrifying, beautiful . . . unforgettable."

"A brilliant novel...Astute, cunning and thrilling in equal measure...deserves to be found by a whole new generation of readers"

"My favorite novel of 2010 would have been my favorite novel of 1993 -- if only I had known about it...Wright died at the age of 80; in 2010 TONY AND SUSAN returns to print as his stunning literary legacy."

"...such an impressive, enigmatic, multi-layered novel that I want to read it all over again. It's Austin Wright's Tony and Susan, a page-turner of a literary thriller that explores the dynamics of everyday life, of love and betrayal - ultimately, of the reading experience itself. Not since Cormac McCarthy's The Road have I been so gripped and unsettled by a piece of fiction.'